Certainly not in the forms it's been in since the 60's. They have stepped up their education benefits quite a bit in the last 20 years but the price is still too high if you're in combat arms and ever have to go do your job for real.
When I was a dumb kid, me and other dumb kids found some paving tiles and decided to break them by throwing them in the air. Unfortunately, I was really bad at aiming, caught it on my head and caused permanent spinal damage.
The doctor recommended strength training, because my muscles would overtaxed by compensating for my wonky spine, which I promptly ignored because, again, I was a dumb kid and girls don't lift weights. So from age 10 to 19 ish I basically had debilitating neck pains every few months which had me stuck in bed on painkillers and muscle relaxants.
After 9 years of being an idiot, I started listening to the doctors, lifted weights, and basically never had a sore neck again. The main downside is that clothes shopping is hard now.
I had two friends, Kat and Tim, who were vibing on each other super hard.
Both of them were afraid to make the first move.
One day I got drunk and I saw them kind of flirting and it got the best of me and I just said hey guys, you two are obviously a great match for each other, why don't y'all go out on a date and see where it goes?
That in itself wasn't that bad but in my mildly drunk stupor I didn't think about the fact that we were all standing in front of all of our friends and they were both shy and because of me saying that they immediately distance themselves from one another and never got together.
If I had kept my mouth shut and just let things progress normally they might have ended up together.
Tim's life really sucks right now and his life would probably be a hell of a lot better if I had just kept my fucking mouth shut.
There's definitely a part of me that blames myself for this.
At the same time though I feel like Tim and Kat have to share some of the blame.
We were all late teens early 20s at this point. This was not some 6th grade shenanigans. Being told that the two of you look good together and obviously like each other shouldn't be the end of the relationship.
I’m terribly sorry for your loss of mental health. Getting the vile shit of the internet directed art you as an adult is awful, can’t imagine how tough it is for a 16y/o.
Yea... it was pretty rough first discovering discord. When I did the Kitten thing, I pretended to be 14. My dms were FLOODED in mere seconds, and I wish I was exaggerating. In 3 minutes I got 90 different dms from people. All male. All of em wanted to fuck me. I never even listed anything remotely NSFW or romantic in my server intro. I just said "Hey! 14yo here, I like to play roblox n stuff sometimes and cosplay! I'm just here hoping to make some more friends ;w;"
That reminds me of when I tried mixing milk with orange juice because I saw it online. Then, I went into denial trying to keep it down because people wouldn't just go on the internet and lie, right?
I was trying to clean something in a bucket of bleach, but didn't have quite enough to cover it. I grabbed a bottle of toilet cleaner, assuming it was just expensive thick bleach, and poured a bunch in. After I started coughing I looked at the back of the bottle, it's active ingredient was hydrochloric acid.
It's a tie between unprotected sex with a stranger I met at a bar, and sleeping on a bench behind the train station in Barcelona.
Luckily, getting robbed behind the train station was the more serious consequence of my poor life choices.
I was actually approached by a hooker there.
After I told her I only had 10€, she said that's OK.
Luckily in that moment, my big head did the thinking.
When I was little, I enjoyed "inventing" things, or drawing designs for things, mostly consisting of aircraft or space ships. One of them was a sub that was constructed out of transparent inflatable plastic, similar to a Zorb ball, so you'd have an unobstructed view of the ocean. It was tear drop shaped and the appeal of the Zorb ball construction was that it'd be comfortable to lie in as you roamed the depths of the ocean. As I got older I learned more about physics and realised what a terrible idea that would actually be.
Reminds me of that story from reddit where op caught a falling microtome blade and suffered from blood poisoning because the nurse messed up his blood types
"My hair's getting a bit long, and my fringe keeps getting in my eyes. It can't be that hard to give it a little trim, right?" 5 minutes later "...I'm going out for dinner in just over an hour. How quickly can I get to a hairdressers?"
My ex had long hair and wanted me to cut it, he pulled it over one shoulder and said "Cut it, just cut it here" and I said "no, it will be slanty" (because he had it pulled over to one side). He insisted, I shrugged and did it .
Took a joy ride on a bulldozer. We built jumps with it and then went over them as fast as that thing would go. No one got hurt and it was a great time, but I think back to how dangerous and stupid it was (no seat belts, one person drove and the rest of us just held onto the cab for dear life, right above the tracks), and realize how lucky we were that nothing bad happened.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a famous inventor. I had this idea that people could stop wearing glasses by getting a prescription car windshields. There are SO MANY drawbacks, but as a kid you don't think of those things.
I once drove drunk. This was long enough ago the statute of limitations has expired. I shouldn’t have done it, I was really lucky that I didn’t hurt someone or get arrested. For the next 15ish years that I still drank, my limit was 1 drink if I was driving.
This was before Uber & Lyft were a thing, but I still could’ve made arrangements with the bar manager “look dude your bartenders kept serving me when I was visibly drunk, so let me leave my car here overnight without towing it so I can take a cab home, and I won’t say shit to anyone.”